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Letters from 5 to 11 April 2010

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Slicing the PIE

As you are worried about not getting any letters, may I point out that ζω (zo) actually means "I live". "Life" would be ζωη (zoe). In any case, minuscule letters hadn't been invented in the 1st century so it would have been written ΖΩ or ΖΩΗ. (I hope the Greek letters come out properly.) And Greek is not derived from Sanskrit. They are both derived from a common ancestor: Indo-European.

Robert W. M. Greaves
All Saints Anglican Church, Jakarta
Jakarta, INDONESIA
robert.w.m.greaves@gmail.com
6 April 2010

Editor: We're aware that the Greek form we used in the front-page essay wasn't the noun, but we were focussing on the root of the word. We know also that minuscules weren't used in the 1st century, but we weren't seeking in the letter to suggest they were. (And of course diacritical marks weren't used till the 3rd century.)

Whilst we realise that IE (actually now referred to as PIE, Proto Indo European) is the linguistic mother of us all, Sanskrit is considered an early offshoot of PIE. We've certainly never heard the theory that Sanskrit is not a source for much Greek vocabulary. We surely mean to suggest that the Greek language 'derived' from Sanskrit, but that the zw– root could be found in the Sanskrit word. After all, since we don't know for certain what the PIE language or alphabet was, it's a little hard to credit the actual source.

Isn't philology fun?

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.